Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1's guide in New Orleans starts with a puzzle above ground: marble tablets here often carry six or eight family names stacked on a single tomb the size of a closet. The explanation runs through a New Orleans law requiring a year and a day to pass before a tomb can be reopened, and through what the Louisiana summer does to a body wedged into a brick vault built to trap the sun. You'll hear why locals have called these tombs ovens for two centuries, and what a family does with a tomb once that year and a day has passed. The open Koenig tomb near the center of the grounds is worth a slow look.